Vantablack: The darkest material on Earth gets even darker

The nanotechnology company Surrey NanoSystem has announced this week that they have made a new darker version of the Vantablack, the darkest material on Earth.

Vantablack is blackest material on Earth ever invented. It was first released by Surrey NanoSystems in 2014 and created with carbon nanotubes capable of absorbing 99.96 percent of light.

The company just released a new version of the Vantablack that absorbs even more light, that much that the company’s spectrometer can’t even measure how dark it is.

Vantablack is a material claiming to be the darkest shade of black possible– it blocks out a massive amount of visible light, though obviously cannot be the complete absence of light. Credit: NerdAlert

The name of the black material stands for “Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Arrays”. It is created through a low-temperature growth process of carbon nanotubes that forms zillions of more nanotubes that stand straight up.

The resulting material is so dark that if Vantablack is grown on a crumpled piece of aluminum foil, it works like an optical illusion to make your eye think it is a perfectly flat surface, as explained by Digital Trends in its related article.

The uses of this material

Vantablack is excellent for eliminating stray light in many places where it is unnecessary. For example, if applied inside a telescope, it would help to make stellar objects easier to see. It would also be helpul for photography studios to block the entrances of light.

Military forces have already taken advantage of the possible uses for Vantablack. If they apply a coating of Vantablack on every military equipment, such as ground vehicles, helicopters and even uniforms, the material could make troops invisible, especially during night.